It's a flashlight..no it's a musical instrument no it's a flashlight tester

Hi guys I know thi9s will sound completely nuts but I discovered something really cool tonight.
I like tools. I like flashlights.
I like a lot of stuff.

To make a very long story short many years ago I met a Guy name Bob Moog.
He built synthesizers.
I have always love these machines use to make weird noises an music.

So a month or two ago I found this weird looking machine which is a synth which ha an optical interface.
This machine responds to light.

I put it on my Christmas list.
I got one for Christmas.

I played with it for a while before I really figured out what it was going and why. After a spell I decided to stand at a set distance away from the device and shone some flashlights at it.
What is interesting is that it is great at giving relative feedback between brightness. What you hear is this: the brighter the Light the higher the frequency of the audio.
So in just a few minutes I can go through 10 lights and determine their relative brightness against each other or at least their hotspots. A ceiling bounce test works very well as well. The sounded frequencies are just lower.
It is amazingly sensitive. In a way It may be more sensitive that the eye as determining relative brightness. It is really cool.
Very much the same kind of thing as a milk carton setup to give relative brightness measurements between lights.
Anyway it was a sort of fun discovery that I can use this strange synth to make relative light measurements of light output between a couple or many flashlights at ease.
Does anybody know if there is a way to attach a sound recording to a message?
If so tell me otherwise I will post an MP3 of several luxeon an cree flashlights. Just for the fun of it.
More about it tomorrow if there is any interest.
Happy Christmas.

Yaesumofo

sounds super cool. I have seen the documentary Theremin:the electronic oddessy that contains Moog and encourage everyone to rent it. hope you can share more about this device.
MC and HH
Sam

Yep, I saw Bob Moog perform using his weird, wonderful synths. with a full symphony orchestra at the University of Arkansas back in the late 60s. Exactly which device are you using? Pretty soon some one will be asking how bright a flashlight is, and you will be responding "it can hit a high C" ha.

The machine is called a Thingamagoop.
From

http://www.bleeplabs.com/

Last night I was using it for a ceiling bounce test. It is extreemely accurate.
It can really detect small (tiny) differences in light.
It is fun and cool. An a neat tool too.
Yaesumofo

Thanks for the link, and enjoy your new...er.....tool.

Hey, my Moog Rogue doesn't do that!

You can take the output into a computer (or any signal analyzer/oscilliscope) and get the actual frequency, or a graph of it (you could even probably get a nice "angle" graph of relative brightness like the specsheets show (lambertian pattern, etc)... with just about any sound program, then save that for comparisons to other lights. Same as a visual spectrum analyzer, just using the audio waveform instead of a direct light-graph relationship. (Basically the audio is the middleman). Not sure what it'd look like exactly, or if there would be issues of logarithmic response curves, etc, but it'd be fun to play with and see what can be come up with. Of course, a simple graphing adapted lightmeter would be more straightforward, but where is the fun in that.

Oh, that IS cool! I would like to hear some MP3's of different flashlights. (That's a funny thing to say.)

if you could stand listening to it for a long time, you could probably do runtime tests. Hook a Mic to the PC's soundcard and record for a REALLY long time.

Hey, it's got a luminal flux decombobulator, according to this page! I've gotta get one of these.

Yaesumofo, how big is it?

If you point a PWM light at it, can you hear the pulses?

Galiphrey said:

If you point a PWM light at it, can you hear the pulses?

Click to expand...

Good question. I bet you can with an EternaLight's strobe mode.

Checked out the site... watched the video...








I have GOT to get me one of those!

mchlwise, I am having thoughts very similar to your thoughts.

yaesumofo, what color scheme is your thingamagoop?

The web site says that flourescent lighting sounds harsher than other kinds of lights. I wonder if that's because of the flourescent flickering. !

Galiphrey said:

If you point a PWM light at it, can you hear the pulses?

Click to expand...

Yes, yes you can; at least with mine! Haha! You may call me a copy-cat at this time (except that it IS different). I built in a little randomness generator for tone selection and beeping intervals (user-enableable), and there are some other additional things and hickies. And it has guitar-pedal in/out ports, so I can add say, an echo. The echo makes it sound like a lost-in-space sound effect.

Anyhoo, by flipping some switches and turning some knobs, it can be made to do exactly what the thingamagoop does. When I point a PWM light at it, it growls. That is to say--normally, it's a pure tone, but the PWM light makes it sound harsh and,... growly. The Flupic on the lowest setting is the most growly, but it growls on higher settings too. And an HDS light is also growly, but less so.

I swept the beam from a P1D-CE across its nose (photoresistors), and did not hear a reversal of frequency-shift when crossing through the "dark ring."

Want to see it!? He has eye-brows, ears, a comb-over (!?) and a chin! and feet.









Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

I had no idea this thread was still alive.
Mine is blue and purple.
It is really sensitive.
I have no intention of interfacing this with a computer.
Galiphrey, Cool thing you have there. Was that a kit? or did you come up with it on your own?

This is a cool little machine.
So is the one you made.
yaesumofo

Galiphrey said:

mchlwise, I am having thoughts very similar to your thoughts.

yaesumofo, what color scheme is your thingamagoop?

The web site says that flourescent lighting sounds harsher than other kinds of lights. I wonder if that's because of the flourescent flickering. !

Click to expand...

Try one of those PWM lights, like the ones that use the FluPic sometime...

Thanks, yaesumofo; no, it wasn't a kit; it was a few trips to Rat Shack... And I had to order some things from mouser. I asked the Rat Shack kid where the photoresistors were, and he said, "What's that? Would you like a new cell phone?"

NewBie, I tried a FluPic and described the result two posts up. Later, I tried an nFlex, and could NOT hear that one. The circuit has a kind of "response time" to it, so it only growls at the slower PWM's. Later, I also tried tube and LCD type monitors, to which it... oh, sorry, that would be outside the scope of this forum. I shall not say!

My flashlight is LOUDER than your flashlight!

I love the thing but I can see how it could drive you crazy.